


Double Clutch

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 18:28:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12064593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: And it’s all of this, rolled up warm in his hands like a cheap burrito, that makes him wish he could push off the fall just a little bit longer.





	Double Clutch

**Author's Note:**

> happy 9/12 nijihimu! \o/
> 
> this takes place shortly after [par four](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/devils_shuu/works/10934397) and is in a lot of ways in response to that lol
> 
> i tried to rein it in with the run-on sentences this time but /sweating smile emoji

Tatsuya’s always loved fall. The break in the heat, the start of basketball season just around the corner, and later on the start of hockey season. Training camp, to start grinding out another year and make up for last year’s mistakes after a long summer of dealing with all the things that led them to falter, to not be the last ones left at the end of the finals (and sometimes long before that). But, after spending most of the summer with Shuu, Tatsuya might revise that a little bit.

He’s still not used to the word boyfriend on his tongue, or even circumventing that and saying the person he’s dating, significant other, his guy. He’s dated people before, even recently, but he’d never had to refer to them like that, and maybe it’s just the residue of teenage insecurity that he still can’t scrub away. It’s stupid; he’s not afraid of committing to Shuu even though he can be cagey about it; he knows Shuu knows even though Tatsuya doesn’t say it as much (he’d let Shuu pick him up from the hospital after he’d fucked up his wrist; he’d stayed home from practice to hold Shuu’s hair back while he was puking from post-concussion symptoms, been an interface to Shuu’s sister when she’d called up worrying). It’s just the things he doesn’t expect, like waking up in the morning and not having to register that he’s at Shuu’s house because it’s so familiar, expecting the weight of Shuu’s arm around his waist, the way his stomach does a double clutch and dunks itself into his diaphragm every now and again for no particular reason other than Shuu acting like himself. He’s not thirteen; they’re long past any kind of honeymoon stage, but it’s like it all keeps unfolding over again in front of Tatsuya, that this is how Shuu is and this is how they are. He wants this, like the way he wants basketball, like winning gold at the Olympics only spread a little thinner but in every direction around him, the way he’d said he’d never take both feet off the ground but here he is, launched in the air higher than his vertical should take him, but he’s forgotten how to be properly scared.

And it’s all of this, rolled up warm in his hands like a cheap burrito, that makes him wish he could push off the fall just a little bit longer. It’s not like everything’s going to reset between him and Shuu, like he’s going to make himself push Shuu away back to where he’d been before the summer started (which honestly hadn’t bene that far back, a lot closer than arm’s length, like the space between the top of his fingers and the bottom of the net with his feet flat on the ground). But they won’t be able to see each other so often. They’ll text and call and Skype, but they’ll be on different sides of the continent, in different time zones or different latitudes at least. They’ll go back to this next summer (if they’re still together, an if that doesn’t seem like such a big, tentative question) but Tatsuya doesn’t want to wait another nine or ten months (though shorter than that means injuries or getting knocked out of the running early). He just wants to suspend this moment, kick all the cans down the road, and suck it dry.

They push their golf outing earlier in the day because the shadows are too long before seven, and the days before Shuu’s training camp starts are down in the single digits. ESPN is showing all NFL all the time in earnest, but it’s not like they’re spending much time watching TV anyway, ramping up their training schedules and squeezing out as much time with each other as they still can. Shuu doesn’t say it but Tatsuya knows he feels it, too, the way he pauses to look into Tatsuya’s eye before kissing him, cupping his cheek and pressing his lips to Tatsuya’s slow and soft, in a way that used to make Tatsuya feel vulnerable, like he should freeze up. He hadn’t been paying attention to when he’d started to be more comfortable with it, lost it in all the other fractional things that being with Shuu’s done to him. And maybe he’s being overdramatic; maybe he’s taking things as more serious or important than they are, but that thought keeps getting harder to push toward the front of his mind, muscled out by the idea that maybe it is serious and important, that it’s worth the weight.

Shuu had promised he’d teach Tatsuya hockey, and he’d come though without needing a reminder. The trainer’s given him a key to the practice facility (like Jagr, Tatsuya had said, and the comparison had made Shuu smile, even though he’d said the similarities had ended there—and, well, it’s true that Shuu’s not wearing a weighted vest or posting 2AM gym selfies, or sporting a mullet and acid washed jeans or whatever the equivalent of that would be today) and they’ve gone skating after hours, and Shuu’s really got no right to complain about how bad he is at basketball. At least he knows how to run and jump and he’s not making a fool of himself in that regard. To be fair, though, Tatsuya doesn’t feel totally inept on the ice anymore, though he’s not above downplaying his skills to get Shuu to pull him around, watch him skate backwards and study his technique a little closer.

It’s not all the ice, though; they practice in the garage when the car’s in the driveway, shooting pucks at the wall. Tatsuya watches Shuu, tracking his gaze and his hands on the stick, the snap of his wrists, and Shuu watching Tatsuya, at first stopping him mid-shot to correct his posture but then waiting for him to correct himself, know his mistakes after they happen, when they’re already happening.

“Shit,” Tatsuya says, his wrist slipping a little too far down and the angle of the stick coming in all wrong, the blade barely hitting the puck and sending it skittering to the side.

Shuu quirks his eyebrow. “You need—?”

“I’m good,” says Tatsuya.

(As much as he likes Shuu’s hands on him, turning his hips before sliding up to his waist, giving Tatsuya room to lean back and kiss Shuu over his shoulder, it’s not like that always overcomes his competitive drive.)

He sets his hands, looks at the puck, then pulls back and fires, holding his wrists steadier this time. The swish of the blade through the air, the smack as it hits the puck square and elevates it directly above where the goalie’s blocker ought to be; Tatsuya knows it’s right on the money. He’s not going to showboat, though; he leans on his stick and turns to Shuu.

“Shit,” Shuu says. “I wish you’d learned hockey earlier.”

(That’s a path of a what if too far back to really explore, but Tatsuya lets himself think about it anyway, just a little, his feet taking to skating like Shuu’s, meeting Shuu with both of them on rollerblades, but then Tatsuya would have been twelve or so when Shuu was fifteen or sixteen and maybe that wouldn’t be good after all.)

“Just one good shot and you’re saying that?”

“I’ve been watching you shoot all summer, you know.”

Tatsuya leans a little harder on his stick. “Yeah?”

He’s grinning when Shuu leans over to peck him on the lips.

“Enough,” says Shuu. “I want to take a nap before dinner.”

“Old man,” says Tatsuya, not quite stepping out of the way before Shuu smacks his ass with his own stick.

They’re probably going to end up sleeping through dinnertime, and Tatsuya will complain about the lack of available delivery options out here when they wake up at one in the morning and end up ordering eggplant parms from the same third-rate deli they always do. But it’s not the worst sometimes routine to have, a holdover from a few of the nights they’d grabbed here together last year, one that just might carry over through the fall and winter. Beyond that, too.


End file.
